


hands unclean

by schuylering



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M, PWP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 05:03:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6315838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schuylering/pseuds/schuylering
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angelica has never found herself particularly easy to live with. She wonders if this is why: she wonders if she creates her own discontent, that if she wasn't as smart or as bold or as hungry or as hard-hearted, if she would be happier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hands unclean

"Quite a party," she says, flippant: the kind of tone she'd perfected at fourteen. 

"Hm," Alexander says absently. He reaches out, tracing two fingers over the seam of her dress, from her ribs to her stomach. His study feels darker than usual, stiller, after the life of the party. She can hear every one of their breaths, the slight creak of the desk as Alexander had leaned back against it. Everything here feels bigger than it is. Angelica leans forward, until his hand curves around her waist.

Like this, with the way he's leaning against the desk and her impractical French shoes, she's taller than him by just an inch. He looks up at her, face open and adoring. 

"Angelica—" he says, and she thinks sometimes that she could live off this alone, the way he says her name like it's a new word he's discovered, just then. Something lovely and powerful, useful as it is beautiful. "Watching you tonight," he says, leaning in, voice low in her ear. "Watching you with—" He doesn't say _your husband_ , and he doesn't say _Jefferson_ , but he says enough.

"Jealous?" she asks, more curious than anything.

"A very Othello," he tells her, half-teasing but serious enough, she knows. 

"You seem determined to make yourself some tragic, Shakespearean figure," she tells him, leaning in closer, until his eyelids flutter, watching her mouth move with the same intent he gives to his writings and his books.

"It seems to fit," he says, a little breathless, but with half a smile. Aggrandizing and self-deprecating at once. 

She hums softly as he nearly falls forward, leaning into her until his hot breath is at her throat, lips following soon after. He ducks his head, kissing the angle of her jaw and the curve of her ear. "And where do I fit," she asks, as he tangles a hand in her perfectly arranged hair, pulling her closer, hungrily, "in these tragedies of yours?"

"Where do you want to fit?" He almost whispers it, voice hoarse.

"Not in Othello," she muses. She twists her fingers in his hair in return, and he moans, soft, against her jaw. "I've never liked it."

"Than in Macbeth," he supplies, voice slightly more breathless. He cranes his head up so she can see the playful smile on his lips. "You're the Lady, of course."

"And Eliza?" she asks: she wants to feel the guilt her sister's name bring between them, will not give herself this indulgence without remembering the cost. "Who is she in this story?"

Alexander's expression changes, guilt welling up in his eyes before he ducks his head again, hiding his face from her view. "Eliza is too good to be written into such a story," he says finally, voice roughened slightly—by guilt, or longing, she doesn't know. Both, if they really are as similar as they think themselves.

They stay that way for a moment, suspended, as if somehow Eliza herself is there in the room with them and they've been caught. She can feel him breathing, and she wonders for a moment if this is it, if he'll lean back and she'll leave and they can mark this night off as only a small betrayal, a slip, a mistake.

But it's only a moment: he looks up at her, eyes asking her for something. Forgiveness, maybe, as if she's in any position to grant it. Some way to escape himself, at least for a little while.

She likes the idea that she can grant him that: likes even better the fact that he can grant her the same in return. She doesn't have to think about it before she twists them, turning until she's the one backed against the desk. He looks at her, a question that she answers with a short sharp kiss, his mouth opening beautifully under hers.

He pulls back only to fall to his knees between her legs, pulling off her drawers and pushing up her skirts. He holds them in place against her thigh, just above her garter, calloused thumb pressing into the thin soft skin. Her legs open farther, and she'd like to say it was against her will but she's never done anything against her will, anything she wasn't aware she was doing.

He presses his face to the inside of her thigh, letting out a breath that ghosts shakily over her skin. He opens his mouth over the same spot, warm from his breath and now wet from his tongue, soft next to the rough scrape of his beard. He moves higher up her thigh, sucking a string of almost-bruises until his cheek, rough with stubble, brushes over her cunt. She inhales, not quite a gasp.

He sets his mouth to her then, licking over soft folds. She can feel herself getting wetter, shuddering as his tongue presses inside her. He steadies himself, one hand pushing her skirts higher, the other just above her knee, thumb dipping under the edge of her stocking and the taut band of her garter to stroke over smooth skin, back and forth, back and forth, the way he drums his fingers when he's thinking or twists his hair when he's unsure.

His tongue moves over her, slipping inside her and swirling over what feels like every nerve in her body, everything in her coalescing in one bright sensitive spot. They talk about this sometimes, after, when John's away and they have a bed to lay in and can pretend, for the heavy, lazy time after they've worn themselves out, that they are alone and unbeholden and unbetraying. Not in specifics, not _when you touch me I feel—_ But generalities, softened by passivity. _I don't think about anything else, when—_ Alexander had sounded half relieved, half scared. The idea of being able to shut of his mind was just as enticing as it was terrifying, and Angelica understood.

 _It makes me feels quiet_ , she'd said once, and he'd looked over at her with an expression she'd only ever seen on him when he looked at her, that she knew was only for her. Surprise, and gratitude: the unexpected moment when someone understands you better than you understand yourself.

(She thinks that would be a way to justify it, if she were interested in justifying it. It's so rare, for anyone in this world to meet someone else they're so perfectly attuned to, body and mind. It's a gift. You should accept it, no matter the consequences.

But the world doesn't work like that, she thinks, as Alexander's tongue flats over her, making her gasp, pushing her closer. You don't get to just do something and free yourself from the consequences. You can do it, of course you can, but then you have to live with yourself, after. 

Angelica has never found herself particularly easy to live with. She wonders if this is why: she wonders if she creates her own discontent, that if she wasn't as smart or as bold or as hungry or as hard-hearted, if she would be happier.)

Alexander's mouth on her becomes more desperate, more insistent. The feeling like a knot inside of her pulls tighter, until it's nearly unbearable. She opens her mouth to say something, his name, or _please_ , but she bites back down on her lip: they don't talk, during. They talk so much and so well, but they never let themselves say a word when they're like this.

She reaches forward, blindly, twisting her fingers in his hair to pull him against her. He makes a sound, something between a whimper and a moan that she feels more than she hears, a rushing sound in her ears like the ocean. She's so close she can taste it, like iron in the back of her throat.

Finally, his tongue makes one last instant drag over her, and she feels it, a wave breaking inside her, pulling her forward in a wordless gasp. For a few moments the air from her lungs is gone, the world around her is dark: her mind is so full or so empty, she can think of nothing at all.

Alexander works her through it, and then beyond, when she comes back to herself and feels too full, too sensitive. He works his mouth on her until she hits the second crest, harsher and faster and more desperate than the first. Her palm flats against the desk, bracing herself as it hits her, wood stinging her skin. She doesn't realize she's clenched her fingers in his hair until he makes a small, sharp sound.

She loosens her fingers but pulls him up, back to his feet. His eyes are dark and shining; he drags a hand over his mouth, but when they kiss he still tastes like her, heavy and sweet. His other hand stays on her thigh, thumb still rubbing over her skin, back and forth, until she shivers.

This is the worst part of it, she knows by experience. As the empty-minded, single-minded desperation falls away, before he pushes inside her and brings it back again, she has to be perfectly aware of what she's done and, at the same time, perfectly aware of what she's about to do. This cannot be written off as an accident, even a series of accidents. The control she's always had over herself and her actions isn't snatched away by Alexander and his clever mouth and shining eyes: she gives it up, willingly, which, she thinks, is a kind of control in itself. 

Either way, she can't pass off the blame for this to someone else, she knows, as she kisses him hard and deep. His hand on her waist tightens, pulling her closer. It's her own guilt. She will have to live with it.

**Author's Note:**

> wrong shakespeare for the title, i know, i know.
> 
> on tumblr over at [schuylering](http://schuylering.tumblr.com/). come talk to me about these crazy kids.


End file.
